Saturday Lecture Series: Solar Max has Passed?

SOLAR CYCLE UPDATE: 2013 is only days away, and according to most forecasters, Solar Max should be approaching as well. But is it? Barely-increasing sunspot counts and anemic solar activity suggest an interesting possibility: Perhaps Solar Max has already passed. This plot of measured vs. predicted sunspot numbers illustrates the idea:

The blue curve traces monthly sunspot numbers measured since 2000. The red curve is the prediction of the NOAA-led Solar Cycle Prediction Panel. So far, Solar Cycle 24 is underperforming even compared to the panel’s low expectations.

There is still a strong chance that Cycle 24 will rebound and peak in 2013 as expected. It might even be a double-peaked cycle like the cycle before it. As 2013 nears only one thing is certain: we don’t know what will happen. Stay tuned. Solar flare alerts:text, voice.

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We're not easily offended and don't want people to think they have to walk on eggshells around here (like at another place that shall remain nameless) but of course, there is a limit to everything.

Right up there with hiz-baa’al-ugh’s call for Jews to emigrate to Israel to save them the trouble of hunting down, the mo-bro-hoods in egypt want the egyptian Jews whom they chased out forcing them to leave with only the clothes on the their backs, want previously egyptian Jews to leave Israel and come back to egypt.

Essam al-Erian, deputy head of the Muslim Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party, called on Egyptian Jews to leave Israel to the Palestinians and return to their own homeland.

“Their presence in Palestine contributes to the Zionist occupation of Arab lands, and every Egyptian has the right to live in his country — nobody can deny that,” Erian said during an interview on the privately operated Dream TV on Thursday. …

“Egyptian Jews should refuse to live under a brutal, bloody and racist occupation stained with war crimes against humanity,” Erian said.

gotta love those silly Yemenies..Yemen is on the verge of am extremely serious water shortage, or worse, literally drying up…
look at these numbers….90% of water is used for agriculture, which is only 6% of their GDP….40% of that is used to grow kat which requires at least three time the amt of water as most food crops..and the govt has done virtually nothing to address the problem…welcome to the dark ages…let AQ have them

It’s gotten completely insane out there. Glad I stocked up on necessities earlier. A Gander Mountain store in MS announced they were getting 64 ARs in last night and they would be available today. The line started forming at 1 AM in 40 degree rain, and by 4 AM the 64 ARs were gone and 27,000 rounds of ammo with them. Where in hell they got that much ammo, I have no idea.

RIX wrote:
@ waldensianspirit:
What if some addled Occupy type decides to go vigilante
on some of the gun owners?
Can the Paper assert that it was not a foreseeable
danger?
OWS is the least of the problems with this breach of privacy. How many of those listed gun owners are retired or current LEO’s or correction officers?? Now the bad guys know where to find them.

Yeah you do bring up a good point there with LEO’s. Of course only a fool of a criminal would actually go after a LEO to be honest.

Has Piers Morgan self depoted himself back to England yet?
It must be so unplesant for him to live amonst us colonial
primatives.

I’ll help buy him a one-way ticket back. But I don’t even think the Brits want this one back. I’m sure he is suffering terribly here. Poor thing/NOT.
/we have enough idiots of our own we don’t need others coming from other countries…there are just somethings we don’t need more of.

RIX wrote:
@ waldensianspirit:
What if some addled Occupy type decides to go vigilante
on some of the gun owners?
Can the Paper assert that it was not a foreseeable
danger?
OWS is the least of the problems with this breach of privacy. How many of those listed gun owners are retired or current LEO’s or correction officers?? Now the bad guys know where to find them.

Yeah you do bring up a good point there with LEO’s. Of course only a fool of a criminal would actually go after a LEO to be honest.

Unfortunately too many criminals are fools or they wouldn’t be criminals in the first place.

Doing pretty good considering. I am going to have some wicked looking scars. Each day I get a wee bit stronger so that is a good thing. Still on bed rest though or couch rest. LOL.
/and you Rix? Hope everything is good with you.

I can relate to the scars. I’m still debating having a zipper tattooed over mine! Today’s my 1 year anniversary! I still get a little pressure once in a while when I cough. That little heart pillow will be your best friend for a while.

Still have pressure? My heart pillow is hard. A zipper over the scar? LOL! My hubby said now I need to get some tat’s since I have all these scars.
So far they don’t have me doing any re-hab yet…but I do go up and down the stairs. I still can’t lift anything. I make sure I take a lot of deep breaths. I can live with the pain in the legs …but the pain in the chest worries me. But it’s just from the surgery. Nothing weird about it.
/glad to hear you are doing well though.

Do they have you on that invective spirometer- the little deal you breathe into? You’ll be on weight restrictions for a while. It was probably 6 months before they’d let me pick up anything more than 25 pounds. I think 10 was the first limit.

Yeah the chest pain, and if your back’s sore too, is from the surgery. It’s going to take some time for that to go away.

My next meeting with my cardiologist is in Feb, so I’m up to about 4 months between appointments.

@ Lily:
good news indeed…I hope you’re the type that enjoys being waited on…declare the sofa your throne and rule from there

Well I have been rather cranky about that. LOL! I think I am over the cranky now. (Thank goodness for my mom and husband!) Everything was so sudden ..that it wasn’t till I got home that everything hit me.
If I would have had a heart attack it would have killed me…even a minor one. I had a lot of luck and God with me is all I can say.

I can’t lift anything over 5 lbs. Doc said I was so tiny they really had to open me wide. So hence I’m hurting more in chest area. Every 4 months? I have doc appointments all over the place in January! Fun, fun, fun!

My surgeon wasn’t real happy I’d driven 120 miles the day I was admitted, after having chest pains all week. He said I could have had a ‘major event’ at any time, and the people at the clinic told Mrs MF to ‘Drive to the hospital as fast as you can. What hospital will you go to- we’ll call them to let them know you’re coming’. When I walked in the door at the ER, they pointed me to the gurney and were hooking me up to everything in sight before the insurance card even cleared her wallet.

Wow! I had a test done and they found my arteries blocked. So the hospital took me hostage then and there. It happened rather quick but I had a couple of days before the surgery. There were a couple of people who were far worse off than me and since I was under observation they kept me a couple of days before the surgery. One of the people before me died after surgery. I was in ICU when it happened. I had a couple of spells in November that led me to the cardio doctor. No heart attack…but it had something to do with the heart. Plus when I recover from the heart by-pass the doctor is going to look at my legs. My legs have blocked arteries too. Genetic and with me smoking didn’t help which lead to me have this surgery at such a young age. I don’t wish it on anyone.

@ mfhorn:
Wow! I had a test done and they found my arteries blocked. So the hospital took me hostage then and there. It happened rather quick but I had a couple of days before the surgery. There were a couple of people who were far worse off than me and since I was under observation they kept me a couple of days before the surgery. One of the people before me died after surgery. I was in ICU when it happened. I had a couple of spells in November that led me to the cardio doctor. No heart attack…but it had something to do with the heart. Plus when I recover from the heart by-pass the doctor is going to look at my legs. My legs have blocked arteries too. Genetic and with me smoking didn’t help which lead to me have this surgery at such a young age. I don’t wish it on anyone.

it happened to me…PAD…resulting in my lower right leg getting chopped off…followed by severe infections, a redaction, and a four year nightmare of pain and infinite frustration

That’s the weird thing with me. My parents are in better health than I am, my cholesterol was about 150, and I’ve never smoked. My wife’s now convinced that I’m in my mid-60’s, instead of my mid-40’s!

Originally they thought that with my age, a stent or two would do the trick. Then they ran the heart cath, and found 2 arteries blocked 90%, and 1 that was ‘almost completely’ blocked (90% isn’t ‘almost completely?). They did those plus 2 others that were about 40% blocked. If I’d been a smoker, this would have hit 10 years earlier.

Best of luck with your recovery! Will you have to make changes to things like your diet? That is SO tough to do.

@ 29 Bumr50: In this one area I don’t mind if people start physically intimidating journalists in the US. As group they are abusing their power. Maybe this is just the first battle in the larger war for the soul of the country.